Page:Poems and ballads (IA poemsballads00swinrich).pdf/258

 And ye put water to my mouth, made sweet With brown hill-berries; so in time I spoke And gathered my loose knees from under me. Moreover in the broad fair halls this month Have I found space and bountiful abode To please me. I Demeter speak of this, Who am the mother and the mate of things: For as ill men by drugs or singing words Shut the doors inward of the narrowed womb Like a lock bolted with round iron through, Thus I shut up the body and sweet mouth Of all soft pasture and the tender land, So that no seed can enter in by it Though one sow thickly, nor some grain get out Past the hard clods men cleave and bite with steel To widen the sealed lips of them for use. None of you is there in the peopled street But knows how all the dry-drawn furrows ache With no green spot made count of in the black: How the wind finds no comfortable grass Nor is assuaged with bud nor breath of herbs; And in hot autumn when ye house the stacks, All fields are helpless in the sun, all trees Stand as a man stripped out of all but skin. Nevertheless ye sick have help to get By means and stablished ordinance of God; For God is wiser than a good man is. But never shall new grass be sweet in earth